On the bus with a woman experiencing spectacular delusions.

She boarded swearing and took a schedule from the plastic rack by the driver. The rack must have done something to make her mad because she returned to it a moment later to whap at it a few times with the schedule, swearing all the while.

She looked like somebody's mom.

She called out, in no particular direction, "Is this the last stop?" The bus driver knew the drill: no, it wasn't.

A group of young women boarded, animated and excited in conversation. She zeroed in on them, rising from her seat to confront them with profanity and demands: "bitch," "slut," "pack yer shit up!"

The bus fell silent. All chatter stopped and everyone stared straight ahead, gazes averted lest they catch her attention.

We rode together like that, captive to her monologue those last few hundred yards to the last station. The bus driver called last stop. The curtain dropped. "Oh!" she said, gently. She strode forward, and, in instant reversal, turned on the charm with a young cute man, stopping to coo and caress his arm and leg. Her curtain call.